On a Need to Know Basis
by akurosa
Summary: They never tell each other they care. They never really have to.


**a/n: Set some time before the trio met Usopp. Never let it be said that Nami is not smart. **

Sometimes the difference between conscious and unconscious is as clear as black and white. On these occasions, waking up is less drifting back to the world of living and more like a punch to the gut.

"...up. Wake up!"

Zoro's eyes snap open, bleary but alarmed. "Bugh?"

Nami is hovering over him, and for a moment, there might have been a desperate sort of panic that made her look younger and smaller, but Zoro blinks and it is gone. The thief is glaring down at him with her usual exasperation and suspicion and the hidden edge of tension she always has but seems to think she is good at hiding. "It's about time you woke up. What's your name?"

"Bugh?"

"Your name, dumbass. I have to make sure you're not concussed. Do you remember any of the fight?"

A fight. Zoro remembers drunken idiots, obnoxious laughter getting louder and giving a friendly warning. And then, and then, the damn axe came out of _nowhere_ and he'd stumbled like a novice because… Zoro's frown clears. Nami had been caught behind him. He couldn't duck without exposing her and he couldn't unsheathe his sword with the kid who'd been helping his mom clear the tables so close to him. Zoro had opted to avoid the blow altogether, grabbing Nami and—

"You tripped and cracked your head at the edge of our table."

Zoro winces. The actual memory of falling is still fuzzy and now he's not sure he even wants to remember. The world's greatest swordsman doesn't trip and get concussions; the world's greatest swordsman doesn't _trip_.

"Given that the alternative was a head or limb getting chopped off, I'd say you made the right choice," Nami passes the swordsman a glass of water, not surprised when he ignores her warning and downs the water whole.

"And Luffy?" Sinking back into bed with a groan, Zoro misses the pensive look that flits across Nami's features at the name. He doesn't see it and so he never thinks to ask what happened, what Nami had seen, what Luffy had done. He only hears the lack of an answer and the alarm returns. "And Luffy?"

"Quit moving, he's fine. He went downstairs looking for a big enough barrel of beer he could chug down your throat 'so you can get better,'" But Zoro doesn't settle back down; his gaze moves from the door to Nami and she rolls her eyes at his paranoia. "I'll bring him up if you want proof that I didn't cut his throat and leave him… in..."

She trails off when Zoro's gaze leaves her face and, to her shock, begins purposely traveling down. On any other man, it can be – would be – a lecherous leer, but on a concussed, dumbass swordsman, it is sheer concentration and a will to not pass out. He is pale and clearly in pain, but with dogged determination, he _stares _at Nami. At all of her.

And suddenly, Nami knows what he is doing.

"I'm fine," She hears herself say. "You kept me out of the way when we were falling."

He seems to have reached the same conclusion because he sinks back into his pillow, clearly ready to return to the land of the sleeping concussed. Nami is slowly settling in her own chair when the swordsman suddenly says, as if in afterthought. "You wouldn't hurt him."

"Yeah, you'd cheat him out of anything he had that you wanted, you'd rob him, lie to him, use him," He glances at her. "But you wouldn't hurt him. Not really."

Apart from being surprised that Zoro has a surprisingly good memory and long attention span for being concussed, and wishing that she can smack the arrogant ass back into sleep, Nami should be inclined to agree; She shouldn't be able to hurt Luffy when she is not as strong or swift as he is, when she does not share his instinctive understanding of battle.

But what Zoro didn't see and didn't think to ask is this: tonight, Nami saw there is more to hurting a man than swinging an ax to his neck or bashing his head in.

It is also in the flinch when the man's friend hears the horrible moment the man's skull gives. It is in the terrible stillness that comes after, a stillness that is the momentum of anger, beautiful in its simplicity and brutal in its certainty. The weapon needs not to be a blunt object and the damage need not to be blood and broken bones; some things still cut past it all and tear the heart open.

Nami watched Luffy, unsmiling and unstoppable, bring down men twice his size and three times his weight with nothing more than his fists and his determination to do so. And after the fight, after the pirate had crouched down to take a look at his friend, Luffy turned to her and asked, "What do we do?" like he expected her to have the answer.

Like he trusted her answer, which he did, because he trusted her.

And so Zoro will never know but tonight, Nami saw that she _can_ hurt Luffy, the same way Zoro hurt Luffy. She can cause that same clear rage that swallows the straw hat boy with grim purpose and determination and the knowledge hurts her a little – cuts into her heart a bit – because as long as the promise on her shoulder burns in her skin, one day, she _will_.

Nami says nothing though; Zoro truly means it or, at the very least, he thinks it's true and he doesn't need to know that she wishes it were too.


End file.
